Every time I make plans for dinner with friends, the conversation always starts out the same.

"How about we go get pizza?" They'll ask.

"I can't do that, remember? Can we go somewhere else?"

"Why not?"

No matter how many times I remind some of my friends, they always forget that the fact that I can't eat wheat means I can't eat it…ever. I have Celiac disease, an autoimmune disease that essentially causes my body to attack itself when I eat anything with gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye, in it. You know how you feel when you get food poisoning or a stomach bug? It feels like that, but 100 times worse.

I found out that I have Celiac disease when I was 17 (I'm almost 21 now) but before that, I had no idea that something I ate every single day was causing all of my problems. My stomach always hurt, I had trouble focusing, and I was constantly tired and moody, among other things. Celiac disease, which is slightly different from a food allergy but sometimes easier to explain that way, affects 1 in every 133 people in the United States, however, most don't know about it. I had never heard of it before I was diagnosed, so finding out that that things like bread, cereal, and pizza were causing me to feel the way that I did was a bit of a shock, to say the least.

The reason that Celiac disease is so hard to diagnose - and the reason it took 17 years to figure that this was what was making me so sick – is because the disease has over 150 different symptoms. When I had trouble with the motor control in my hands, I got sent for a MRI, not to a gastroenterologist.

Once I got diagnosed and I stopped eating anything with wheat in it, I felt so much better. The changes happened almost overnight – my stomach stopped hurting, my hands stopped twitching, and I wasn't always tired and moody. Of course, now I have to be 10 times more careful than I used to when I go out to eat, and it's hard to make some people understand why.

Most people are understanding, but a lot of people who knew me back in my "past life" always forgetting that I can't eat things like pizza, or that I have to be careful at certain restaurants, or that I might not want to eat somewhere where I've gotten sick in the past and I'd appreciate it if we could go somewhere else. I also spend a lot of time explaining this to people I've just met, and I've discovered that they way a guy I might want to date reacts to this says a lot about him. If he understands that I need to look at a menu before I'll agree to eat somewhere, or if he isn't bothered by the fact that I might ask the waiter a lot of questions, then that's great. If not, or if he complains (as one guy did) that I "can't eat anything," then I might not return his phone calls anytime soon.

Sure, trying to track down gluten-free bread and having to watch everything that I eat can be frustrating at times, but on the upside, I've learned how to make some killer gluten-free cookies, and I can name every restaurant in Manhattan that serves gluten-free pizza. I always tell everyone that not being sick anymore more than makes up for having to deal with the slight inconvenience of not always being able to eat what and where I want to, even if it is frustrating sometimes. More importantly, if any of these symptoms sound familiar to you, make sure that you talk to your doctor about getting tested.